A Kentucky man who killed three students and wounded five more in a school shooting 25 years ago will go before the state parole board on Tuesday in a high-stakes hearing that could see him released or denied the chance to ever leave prison.
Michael Carneal was a 14-year-old freshman on Dec. 1, 1997, when he fired a stolen pistol at a before-school prayer group in the lobby of Heath High School, near Paducah, Kentucky. School shootings were not yet a depressing part of the national consciousness, and Carneal was given the maximum sentence possible at the time for someone his age — life in prison but with the possibility of parole. A quarter century later, in the shadow of Uvalde and in a nation disgusted by the carnage of mass shootings, Carneal, now 39, will try to convince the parole board he deserves to be freed.
